


Travel like Gypsies in the Night

by plvtoe



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Intergalactic Road Trip, It's Rated T because they talk about Keith vaguely losing his virginity and that's it, M/M, Post Season 6, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-17 23:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15472149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plvtoe/pseuds/plvtoe
Summary: “Okay, so you didn’t recognize me at first because I grew over half a foot in a year and became outrageously gorgeous. Check. What was the second reason?”Keith scoffs with a light smile at the statement, but Lance notes with heated cheeks that he doesn’t correct him. “You’re not allowed to laugh at me for the next one,” he demands. Lance rolls his eyes playfully, and Keith continues. “No. I’m serious. I’ll pilot Red straight into an asteroid belt.”Their lion gives an unamused grumble at the idea.“Fine, I promise,” Lance grins and raises his pinky finger next to Keith’s. The rebel scoffs but locks their digits together.“I thought your name was Taylor since we were twelve.”Lance trips over his words, sputtering into a loud laugh. Keith rips his fingers away, annoyed. “You said you wouldn’t laugh!” he protests as his co-pilot leans over the chair in giggles.Or where Keith and Lance are assigned to go fetch Matt Holt from a planet six light years away before returning to Earth. An intergalactic road trip in the Red Lion ensues.





	Travel like Gypsies in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday Lance! Every year it seems I write an overly-long fic for Lance and manage to write it in very little time. This is the second year coming! I started writing this fic after S6 came out but totally forgot about it until about a week ago. This is mostly un-beta'd, because I don't have one :(. If you would be interested in becoming mine, message me on my tumblr (@rasp-b3rries)! My upcoming fics are all Klance, but I plan to write Kagehina (from Haikyuu!!) soon.  
> The title is from the song "No Roots" by Alice Merton. I think the song really reflects both Keith and Lance respectively, so I decided to name this after it!  
> Eventually Season 7 will come out and this fic will now be 'Canon Divergent', but until August 10, 2018, it's Canon Compliant!  
> I've had a few questions about this: in this fic, Keith is 19. He was 17 before he left for the Quantum Abyss. Lance is 17 before the last day of the fic, where he turns 18.

Before Sam Holt was sent back to Earth, Coran had given him a data chip.

Lance hadn’t been around for this particular interaction, but Pidge and Matt figured out how to transfer files onto an Earth-friendly USB. Coran stored emergency plans and hardware on the USB before gifting it to the Holt’s father. He took it back to their home planet, along with the video messages each paladin had left for their families.

The teenager shudders at the memory of recording his.

His week hadn’t been going great before the recording in the first place. Lotor had suddenly joined their team and Zarkon was closer than ever. Lance didn’t have time to relieve stress, which was clear as he saw red, irritated blemishes along his jaw before sitting down. He sighed, wanting to pick at them but deciding not to. That would be the worst thing he could do for it.

The brunet walked into the library, where Coran set up the recording device and a desk for the paladins to sit at. He was the last one to go. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing his bangs back. Since leaving Earth, his hair had grown longer, almost to the length Keith had before he left. The thought made him raise his lip in discomfort. He hadn’t had the time to have Hunk or one of the others cut it for him. No one did.

Tired of procrastinating the recording, Lance approached the desk and turned the recording device on. A quiet _beep_ and a flashing green light notified him it had begun recording . Anxiety licked up the walls of his stomach. He felt like a rock was shoved down his throat.  The seventeen year-old moved across the desk, seating himself in the chair provided. The silicone-like of his armor made a _clank_ against the chair.

“Hey,” he started, unsure of where to go next. “I’m alive.”

Lance huffed out a breath. “That’s an understatement,” he muttered in discontent, looking down at the table. “So, this recording is about nine months after I went missing. You guys already know the basics of everything from the Voltron explanation we recorded, so I guess this’ll just be my personal messages for you guys.” Lance tapped his fingers against the desk, anxious. Where should he even start with this?

“I’m sorry for missing Christmas,” he began. “And your birthdays. I remembered them, though. I had Pidge make a calendar in sync with Earth. So I knew when it was your guys’ birthdays and such. I didn’t forget,” he repeated. “I think I’m going to address all of you at once first and leave the private messages towards the end.”

“I didn’t know going and piloting that giant mechanical lion would lead me to this. I didn’t know that would be my last night on Earth for a long time, either. But I can’t say I regret any of this because I know doing it keeps you guys safe back home.

It’s not all bad. I have my original Garrison crew with me; Hunk and Pidge are here. You guys already knew who Shiro was because I talked about him a lot, but he’s here and he’s alive, despite being missing.”

Lance inhaled a quick breath of air, “and Keith is here. I talked about him a bit. Well… he used to be here. He left to go join an alien resistance because his mom was a part of it. Did I mention he’s part-Galran? It’s a little weird, but he’s still the same ol’ Keith—” Lance cut himself off, hands clenching at his sides. “But yeah, he left. I think it was because of me,” he confessed, raising his eyes to the camera. “I started out in the blue lion, but then Shiro went missing and everything was scrambled. I’m the red paladin now, though. Which is okay.”

“I just—” Lance choked on air. His eyes stung as tears threatened to spill. “I just miss you guys a lot. It’s really hard to… to deal with everything, out here. Sometimes I feel like I’m the odd one out. I miss every one of you. I should’ve been taking my end-of-year flight exams by now, but instead I’m out here. I can’t even tell you guys where I am because it’s so far away humans never even named galaxies and star systems over here. It—it sucks.”

The red paladin ran a hand through his hair again, taking a shuddering breath. “I think I’m running out of time, so I won’t be able to do personal messages. Don’t worry, though. I’m still alive and I’m doing all right. I’ll be home soon, and if not I’ll send another message somehow. I’m being safe out here, so don’t worry about me.” Lance plastered on a weak smile despite the tears now rolling down his cheeks. “I love you guys. Mama, Marco, Veronica, Luis, Benito, Rachel, uncle Tony, Jessica, abuela, abuelo. I promise I’ll end this war as soon as possible so I can come home.”

He heaved a sigh, holding himself together before waving. “Bye, _los quiero mucho._ I’ll see you soon.”

It wasn’t until after the teen leaned forward to turn the camera off that he cried. His teammates pretended not to notice his red eyes after he left the room.

 

*

 

“So we’re going to get Matt first,” Pidge explains. The team had stopped at a nearby inhabited planet to collect supplies for the first leg of their journey and figure out a plan. The planet’s creatures comprised three major species. The tavern that the group had wandered into was run by a race of _Umirz_ , which Lance thought looked like if Bi Bo Bi reproduced with a plant creature. Hunk claimed they reminded him of Pokemon, with their long, branch-like arms and foliage-covered bodies.

Pidge’s small hands swipe across the buttons on the hologram map of the nearby galaxies. Luckily, the green paladin grabbed a box full of gadgets she had bought at random markets throughout their travels. This included a wrist watch with a hologram that showed nearby solar systems and star clusters. She swipes over a couple of solar systems. Pinching with two fingers, she zooms in on a green, lush planet. “In the next movement, he’ll arrive on this planet’s rebel base because it’s the midpoint between our locations. The planet is,” she pauses, typing an equation into a blocky device on the table they’d been seated in the corner, “six light years away.”

“How long will it take us to reach him?” Allura asks. Pidge glances down at her calculator device once again, pressing buttons at rapid fire.

She answers without looking up. “As a group, in the five lions? Over three movements.”

“That’ll be too much time wasted,” Lance remarks from across the table. He had been silent between Hunk and the wall, but he knew the math didn’t add up.

Pidge nods in agreement before tapping another calculation in. “With just the red lion, you could make it in six quintants.”

“We can’t split up the lions!” Coran states in a hushed tone. He darts his eyes around the tavern. “That would endanger both sides’ lives. Lance would travel alone and the rest of us wouldn’t be able to form Voltron.”

“We’re also not thinking about the fact that there’s no autopilot for lions. Your calculations don’t include resting time for the pilots,” Shiro adds from the corner. Lance’s eyes dart to their leader, who still looked weak but slightly better from a day of rest. A hood covered his shocked-white hair to avoid attention in the building.

“Um, what about Keith?” Everyone turns their heads to the newest Altean. Romelle had spoken little since she joined the group apart from her introduction. She sits with her hands clasped around her drink. “He piloted the red lion too, right?”

Pidge slams her hands onto the table. “Romelle’s right!” she announces. “Lance and Keith pilot Red together, switching every few hours so the other can rest. Their fighting styles are almost completely opposite so in case they run into trouble it’ll balance out. That way we’ll still have pilots for the remaining lions. Once Keith and Lance leave, the rest of us can head toward a rendezvous. It’ll be a shorter distance for us and longer for the red lion when you combine their flight to Matt and to the rendezvous afterwards.” She turns back to her calculator, fingers flying across the buttons at rapid fire. “If we put an estimated time for the main group to reach a rendezvous, combined with rest stops for the pilots, and the time it’ll take Keith and Lance to retrieve Matt and meet us there, we should be able to rendezvous at…” the table is blanketed in silence as the genius finishes her calculation and copies it into her hologram watch. A map springs up in a projection, highlighting Pidge’s face blue. “Planet Gorab, in the 13th Rebulon zone. We’d meet back up in a little less than two movements.”

Lance glances hesitantly at Keith to find him looking back. The half-Galran raises his eyebrows before turning his gaze back to the youngest paladin.

“What about the possibility of the main group getting into trouble?” Hunk asks.

“I think we could manage ourselves, especially with additional members,” Pidge answers, casting a nod towards Shiro, Romelle, and Krolia. Each looks uncomfortable with attention on them.

Lance isn’t sure what to think of the idea. First, he feels uneasy splitting from the rest of the group. Even with his trust in the former leader, the brunet doubts they could both take down an invading Galra fleet with just the two of them. He looks across the table at Keith, whose head is lowered as he talks to his mother. She nods before speaking in a low, quiet voice.

It almost scares Lance how alike to his mother Keith is. They both hold themselves in a similar way. The only difference Lance can find is Krolia held herself in a perfect posture, soldier sort of way while Keith’s seems less confident and more beaten into him throughout the years. They share almost all their physical characteristics, especially now that Keith is taller and less lanky. Lance almost _hates_ standing next to Keith now because he’s reminded of the sudden age increase Keith went through during his time in the quantum abyss.

Lance is pushed out of his thoughts when Keith nods to Krolia and turns to address the rest of the group. “I’ll have to see if Red will still let me pilot her. If she does, I’d be willing to copilot her with Lance.”

Allura smiles. “Good. Lance,” she turns to look at the red paladin, “are you up for it?”

“Sure.” The words are out of his mouth before he can even think about the question. The answer really should be _no, I’m not up for going on a dangerous mission with just Keith to watch my back, especially when standing next to him still makes my stomach twist inside-out_ , but the logical part of his brain reminds him there’s no one else who could do it. “When do we leave?”

“Tomorrow morning. We’ll have the navigation system set up for you by then and enough supplies for the journey.”

Lance nods, gaze turned to a random spot in the tavern. _It’s just a small detour_ , he reminds himself. _Then you can go home_.

 

*

 

The next morning, the rest of the group has their supplies and navigation ready for them in the red lion. Lance is busy talking to Hunk and Pidge when he notices Shiro and Keith out of the corner of his eye.

Keith looks worried, eyebrows lowered and eyes cast aside. Shiro stands before him. His white hair makes the rest of his skin look pasty, but Lance doesn’t know if that’s the effect of the hair or his health. Their leader reaches forward and hugs Keith tightly. The younger’s arms curl into his brother’s chest. The space wolf wanders from Krolia to its owner, curling onto Keith’s feet. At this point Lance stops paying attention to Pidge and Hunk talking.

“So, good luck out there,” Pidge wishes. Lance spins his gaze around to look at the paladin again. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, avoid fighting my brother on the way.”

“Yeah, best behavior, Lance,” Hunk chides with a snarky grin. The Cuban rolls his eyes in response.

“Wow, thanks _mom_ ,” he jokes. The three hug each other before Coran announces it’s almost time for Keith and Lance to go. Lance heads back towards Red’s mouth, Keith following hesitantly. “Do you want to fly first, see if Red will accept you?” he asks. Keith nods and walks up the ram into Red’s mouth. Lance gives one last wave to the group before heading inside with him.

Inside, the two walk in silence to the cockpit. Keith almost seems more tense than Red is right now. Lance can feel the mechanical lion send of warning sirens in his thoughts, surprised by Keith’s sudden transformation since the last time he flew her. She sends a flurry of images depicting her confusion as Keith sits down in the pilot’s seat.

The lights do not turn on as Keith grips the thrust handles tightly. Lance can tell he’s frustrated before even starting. Red doesn’t react to him, suspicious of who was sitting in the chair.

 _Red,_ Lance thinks, projecting to the lion. _That’s just Keith. He’s still him. Just older. Let him fly, please?_

Red doesn’t respond, continuing to send confused and wary emotions, but Lance notes they’re weaker this time.

 _It’s the same Keith he’s always been_ , Lance projects. Keith grips the handlebars so tight his knuckles turn white, jaw set.

The mechanical lion seems to accept her paladin’s last point. Keith may have changed physically and matured, but he was still the same as his seventeen year-old self. The lights buzz to life inside the cockpit. The pilot’s chair kicks forward, sending Keith in front of the dashboard. Lance leans against the wall, a small smile adorning his face to match Keith’s.

“Thanks, girl,” Keith mutters, preparing the lion for takeoff. Lance sends similar gratitude to Red through their mental link.

“Can you feel her emotions?” Lance asks. Keith flicks multiple switches above his head before answering.  
“Yeah, but definitely not as strong as I used to,” he responds with a sad lilt in his voice. Lance moves forward to his chair and hesitantly places his hand on Keith’s shoulder. When the half-Galran doesn’t flinch away or cut Lance’s hand off with his luxite knife, he squeezes his shoulder.

“Hey,” Lance talks evenly. “You’re still the red paladin in my book, if that counts.”

He can see the corners of Keith’s lips turn up slightly through the windshield reflection. “Thanks, Lance.”

“No problem, buddy,” Lance’s hand lifts from his copilot’s shoulder. His hand is buzzing. He turns around to sit in the closest passenger seat to the front. When he buckles the seatbelt across his chest, about three feet from Keith, the red lion takes off from the planet.

Through the windshield, Lance watches as the visible atmosphere disappears as they ascend miles upwards. Within seconds they’ve left the orbit of the planet, allowing Lance to unbuckle his seatbelt. He walks back to the front, gripping the headrest of the pilot’s seat with two hands. Keith flies them past another planet with ease.

“Can you put the navigation on?” he asks. Lance nods, pressing a few buttons and coordinates in the dashboard before a hologram map pops up on the windshield screen. He glances outside at the stars before back to the map, eyebrows scrunched.

“Keith?” he calls, studying the map. The boy only hums in response, eyes trained ahead. “You’re going the wrong way.”

The half-Galran lets out a string of curses before wrenching the red lion around.

 

*

 

“Wait, you were born in _Texas_?” Lance squawks. Keith rolls his eyes at the dramatism before nodding.

It’s only about an hour into their journey so far. The two agreed to take three hour shifts flying so they wouldn’t be totally exhausted. Keith, at first, objected and told Lance they could easily fly for four hours before needing rest. However, Lance rebutted 3 hours would allow them to have 2 full REM cycles, _so shut it, mullet_ .  
Due to the fact that both had woken up from a full night’s sleep just an hour before, Lance finds himself sitting on the floor next to Keith’s chair. He leans his back against the hard metal.

“Yeah,” he answers. “Krolia was compromising a Galra mission when she crash-landed in the desert near my dad’s house. He met her and nursed her to health, offered her a place to stay. Then they had me. Krolia planned to stay on Earth for the rest of her life to raise me with my dad and protect the blue lion, but then she had to go rejoin the war. I was only six months old when that happened.” The tone of Keith’s voice contrasts against his apathetic expression.

“So your dad just raised you on your own? Did he have a southern accent?” Lance asks, trying to make it sound lighthearted in an effort to make Keith smile again.

Surprisingly, it does. Keith smirks, eyes following the stars in front of them. “Yeah, he had a southern accent. And he raised me.”

“Then how come you don’t have one?”

The smirk disappears. “Um, it’s because he died when I was ten. After that I was put through foster care throughout the country. I kind of lost any accent I had throughout the years.”

Lance feels the weight of Keith’s words hit him like a ton of bricks. Keith grew up an orphan, which unfortunately makes sense. He never talked about his family while the rest of the group members reminisced and his cold, isolated personality should’ve given Lance a hint a long time ago.

“Shit, I’m sorry, Keith,” he whispers.

The boy shrugs. “I’ve had time to get over it. It helps I found Krolia.”

Lance nods, but a question pops into his head. “If you were in foster care, how did you end up at the Garrison?”

Keith shifts in his seat, wiping his hands on his suit individually as to not take both hands off the thrusters. “When I was thirteen, I met Shiro. I had just ran away from my fourth foster home and he almost hit me with his car.” Lance gapes at the confession but his partner continues. “He took me back to the Home, but on the half hour drive back he decided he wanted to adopt me.”

“Shiro _adopted_ you?” Lance asks in astonishment. He knew the two were close, but he only assumed it was because they were friends at the Garrison.

He nods. “Sort of. He took guardianship of me and enrolled me into the Garrison so we didn’t have to live apart. He was only 23 at the time and had just been promoted to Head Officer of Recruits. He really didn’t need the burden of a child at the time but he promised he wouldn’t give up on me. So, I stayed. I never ran away because I never wanted to.”

Lance leans back against the metal. His head _thuds_ against it as he stares at Keith. “So Shiro’s your dad or something?”

Keith snorts and shakes his head. “He’s a father figure, _sure,_ but I just call him my brother.”

The Cuban mouths the words over silently, staring out the side window across the cockpit. Stars zoom by, creating quick flashes of light that spread through the cockpit before disappearing in time for another to brighten the room.

“When did you join the Garrison?” Keith asks, and Lance remembers that Keith never knew him before the night they left Earth. He never noticed Lance hating him from afar out of jealousy.

“Uh, my family couldn’t afford the fighter pilot program tuition when I didn’t get the full scholarship into first year. I got a cargo pilot scholarship, though, so I stayed there. I just studied fighter pilot subjects in between classes, and right before freshman year Hunk figured out how to hack into the simulators to allow fighter pilot levels for me. I'm lucky he did that, really, because then I was offered a full-ride fighter pilot scholarship in freshman year, but I didn’t get the official title in my pod until sophomore year because I was in the third spot. At least, I was until you left. Then I was bumped up to be one of the Head Fighter Pilots.”

Keith whips his head around to Lance behind him, but quickly redirects his eyesight to the windshield. “You—” he cuts himself off to clear his throat. “You’ve only been in the fighter pilot program for two years?”

The paladin nods, resting his chin on the top of the pilot’s chair. “This year would’ve been my third, had we not gotten thrown into space war.” He means for the statement to seem lighthearted, but his voice lowers towards the end. If Keith notices, he doesn’t say anything about it.

Instead, he keeps turning his head before looking forwards, as if he’s trying to see if Lance grew a third eye. “Lance, do you have _any_ idea how impressive that is?”

The Cuban raises an eyebrow. “That I couldn’t afford tuition?”

“No, you idi—” Keith huffs, gripping the thrusters tightly. “Oh my god, all this time everyone just thought you were shit at flying.”

“Uh—”  
“I mean,” he interjects before Lance can overthink. “The fact that your flying was like _that_ when we found Blue and you had only been flying and doing offensive simulators for _two years_? That’s—” he scoffs, pushing his bangs back against his forehead. “Lance, you have no idea how impressive that is.”

Before Lance hesitates, petty words are spat out of his mouth. “Iverson didn’t seem to think so. He said my flying was too defensive.”

“Iverson’s an asshole!” he refutes. “If everyone knew how much you had improved in just two years, he’d be kissing the ground you walk on.”

Lance lifts his chin from the seat. Stars and blank space rush past them. Keith seems to be heavily pushing on the thrusters. Lance wonders if his grip on the handles hurts by now. “I’ve never seen you so honest, Keith,” is all he can think of to say.

The other halts, finally unsure of what to say next. Lance almost felt like he had whiplash from the sudden change from fast-paced statements to silence.

“I guess I don’t see the point of hiding things anymore when there’s a chance of us dying daily,” he whispers.

Lance leans his arms back on the seat, looking down at the rebel’s head. “We had the chance of dying every day before, but you never let anyone in.” His tone is soft. He’s afraid if he raises it, Keith will suddenly snap to his old personality and put up walls.

“That changed a long time ago,” Keith insists. “But I guess it was a short amount of time for you. At Naxzela…”

The elder goes quiet. Lance nudges his shoulder gently. “At Naxzela?”

“It’s not important,” he decides. Lance doesn’t miss the disappointment in Keith’s voice, but he’s unsure of whether it’s directed at him. “I realized that there’s a chance that by the end of this war I might not be around anymore. And I don’t know if that’ll be tomorrow or seventy years from now, but I guess I stopped seeing the point of bottling everything up.”

Lance is silent. He was almost the exact opposite. If he was going to die tomorrow, why complicate things like emotions and honesty into the mix?

A grumble echoes through Lance’s head. Red conveys a plethora of emotions towards him, all at once. Her paladin only translates the _you can be honest, too_.

Instead, he says, “I think it’s my turn to fly.”

 

*

 

One thing that was the most noticeable difference between having the Castleship and _not_ was the definite lack of wormholes. None of the paladins have ever flew the lions this long, apart from their search for Shiro. Even then, they had only been out for a day. Twelve hours of nonstop flying, at most. It hadn’t been _terrible_ , per se, but the exhaustion from the flight definitely kicked in when Lance met his bed at the end of the day .  
However, the excursion to get Matt Holt feels ten times worse, and it’s only ten hours into the trip. Keith has been silent since their last conversation about Naxzela. Lance doesn’t offer small talk. Instead, they fly in silence. It’s an hour or so into Lance’s second shift piloting, and he’s surprised Keith hasn’t decided to take a nap already to avoid the crushing silence. It isn’t even as if they are apart, doing their own things. Lance is flying Red, and Keith—well, Keith’s just sitting, watching.

They made their way out of the solar system hours ago. Judging by the locator blip on Red’s dashboard, they’re over halfway out of the entire galaxy. The scenery hasn’t changed much other than the occasional shift in star placements as they travel further into deep space. On the first shift, Lance could bear the dreadful boringness of traveling in blank space, but now it’s just frustrating. There hadn’t even been asteroids or some other kind of space rock for the past _six_ hours.

Lance remembers with a twitch of a smile that traveling one lightyear would take over thirty thousand years with Earth technology. In Red, it barely takes a day to travel that distance. The sudden leap from human technological abilities to Altean, even with the 10,000 year gap, was astonishing. The paladin’s mind immediately flashes back to the first day at the Garrison when they introduced the new equipment.

_The fact that Lance is standing within twenty feet of Takashi Shirogane makes him practically vibrate on the spot. Shiro’s taking roll call of the small group as they stood in one line. Lance was placed next to a tall kid named James and a girl named Sabrina. He pouts. Everyone here is taller than him._

_(Later that night, when he’s nestled in the top bunk of his temporary dorm for audition week, he complains to his mama on the phone about it. She chuckles and coos at her youngest._

_“Oh, Lancito,” he doesn’t need her to be right in front of him to feel the smile upon her lips. “All the Alvarez boys had late growth spurts. So did your uncles. You’ll be alright, just wait a couple years.”_

_Hunk laughs at him when he tries to see if he’s grown any since the morning. It isn’t a mean chuckle. Instead, it’s lighthearted and full of teeth. Lance can’t help but begin laughing, too.)_

_“Lance McClain,” Shiro calls. Lance immediately straightens his posture, snapping out of his daze._

_“Present!” he squawks, and realizes with embarrassment that_ yeah, he definitely said that too loud. _James snickers at his misfortune as Shiro raises an eyebrow. He holds Lance’s gaze for two, three seconds before nodding, checking the Cuban’s name off the list. The brunet fidgets as Shiro finishes up the last of the list._

_“To make it to the second round, you’ll need to make it in the top six scores of this simulator. It’s a basic flight simulator, but everyone has to take it,” the group walks up to a building on the edge of the tarmac. Shiro leads them inside. “Even if you plan to focus on communications or engineering, you still need to know the basics of flying.”_

_Lance notices at least four of the students sulking at the new information._

_“Don’t put too much pressure on yourself, we don’t expect any of you to make it past level two,” Shiro assures, and Lance huffs a breath._ Just make it to level two, _he whispers in a mantra._

_Instead of going in alphabetical order, Shiro announces they can volunteer. Three hands shoot up, followed by two hesitant ones. Their instructor nods towards a boy with an orange headband. Lance notes he was the last one to raise his hand._

_“You can go first, Garrett,” the boy wrings his wrists as he walks towards the simulator seat. Shiro stops him with a_ _hand on_ _the shoulder before he sits down. The tall man leans to Garrett’s ear. The following words are murmurs, but Lance is close enough to hear. “I’m sorry, can you tell me how to pronounce your first name again?”_

 _The boy’s lips quirk into a smile, obviously pleased about the concern from the senior officer. “I just go by Hunk, to make it easier.”_ _  
_ _Shiro nods, repeats the name, and allows Hunk to go into the simulator. The pilot turns back to the rest of the group. “Level one will consist of you exiting Earth’s atmosphere. You must be wary of differing air currents and keep your aircraft stable. Level two will consist of passing by our solar system’s planets and evading their gravitational pulls. The hardest will be Jupiter, with its size and moons.”_

 _The first couple seconds of the sim seem anxious for the entire group. Hunk manages to evade any wonky air currents exiting the atmosphere, but almost forgets to vent the engines as he enters the thermosphere. This causes his final push to be shaky, but he corrects it before the simulator goes dark. The bright words of_ END LEVEL ONE _flash upon the screen, and the class cheers for the boy. Lance and several others lean closer to the simulator, eager to see level two._

_Hunk has momentary warning before he’s launched into level two. He makes it past the moon and Mars without any blips, but is pulled into Jupiter’s orbit soon after. Hunk grits his teeth and swerves to correct it, only to slam the aircraft into one of its moons._

_“That was Adrastea, the smallest of Jupiter’s four inner moons. Good job, Hunk. You should be proud of making it that far without any prior piloting knowledge,” Shiro praises. Hunk grins sheepishly before stepping out of the simulator._

_The following six students after Hunk don’t make it far. Only four make it to level three, and most crash into Jupiter’s moons. James follows after and manages to pilot past Saturn before getting pulled into Uranus’ gravitational pull._

_“Nice job, James,” their instructor pats the boy on the back as he leaves the sim. He seems proud of himself. “Okay, two left.”_

_Lance realizes with a jolt that he’s talking about_ him _and some other kid so he promptly jerks his hand up. The last thing he wants is to go last. “I’ll go!” he calls._

_“Alright McClain, get up here,” Shiro invites. The twelve year-old hurries to the simulator seat. A sudden rush of excitement fills him when the screen lights up to his touch on the controls. He notices the other students lean in close to watch._

_The simulated aircraft launches, and Lance easily recognizes the controls of a fighter spacecraft. One that was still being manufactured, still in its early stages of design. Lance’s grandparents complained it was wasting taxpayer money, since there was no need for fighter pilots in space. The boy smirks._

_He weaves his way through the stratosphere air currents, dodging any rogue tailwinds as he makes his way upwards. He vents a little too early, but not so much that it’ll affect the flight. The Cuban adjusts the timing between venting as he exits the thermosphere. The bright words_ END LEVEL ONE _and_ BEGIN LEVEL TWO _glow against his skin. He can feel his classmates’ jitters behind him as he presses forward on the thrusters, coasting past the moon and Mars. Deciding there’s no such thing as too much space, he puts distance between himself and Jupiter. The group hums in surprise._

 _Saturn is easy to get by with his distance, but as the simulator announces he needs to track closer to Uranus and Neptune, he gently accelerates. Lance glances at the orbital graph at the top of the screen, one that many students ignored in favor of keeping their eyes in front of them. He notes the orbitals and changes his trajectory, sailing past the sideways planet. Neptune is easier to pass due to the smaller mass, but Lance creates some distance just in case. Before he knows it, the fighter spacecraft is flying past Kerberos, Pluto’s farthest moon. The words_ END LEVEL TWO _illuminate on a black screen. He hears the group’s excitement behind him, but tunes_ _it out_ _to focus on what his instructor is saying._

_“Okay, wow—” Lance soaks in the surprise from the pilot. “Erm—level three consists of making it a third of the way through the Kuiper belt.”_

_The Cuban mouths_ Kuiper _to himself before nodding as the screen illuminates the asteroid field. There’s no slow progression of the amount of objects in the area. It feels like Lance is suddenly thrusted into a wall of rock, hurtling towards it at unsteady speeds. He quickly deaccelerates, pulling up over an asteroid before sailing back down. The next two minutes consist of Lance dodging meteorites to the best of his ability, feeling a sweat work up on the back of his neck._

 _He loses focus for just a moment when he narrowly avoids colliding into an asteroid, too busy trying to straighten his trajectory when something grinds against his left wing. A red warning light flashes across the screen. Lance barely has a moment to glance at the diagram that popped up, showing damage to his left engine. He grits his teeth, already feeling the difference in the flight. He manages holding the trajectory for another minute. He’s almost_ _in the clear_ _, he_ knows _it, he just has to make it past this area—_

 _A flying comet slams into the side of his spacecraft, and the simulator goes dark. The flashing words_ LEVEL THREE FAILED _are followed by Lance’s score and name. He finally breathes when he sees he’s at the top spot for scores._

_His classmates cheer around him, shaking his shoulders._

_“Did you see how fast he pulled the needle maneuver?!” Isabella, if Lance remembers her name correctly, screeches. Lance sits up from the pilot seat unsteadily._

_“He’s our resident tailor!” someone jokes from behind him. The group laughs, and Lance walks back into the small crowd._

_“Excellent work, McClain,” Shiro praises. Lance feels his face heating up at the compliment. “You went above and beyond.”_

_Lance isn’t even annoyed when his top spot is bumped down when the grumpy kid—Keith Kogane, Lance remembers—finishes level five. When he finishes, the entire group is cheering for him. Shiro remarks how his flying is offensive while Lance’s was defense._

_“Watch out, the senior officers might make you flight partners in your junior year,” Shiro commends. Lance glances over at the boy to see him look away at the same time, red-faced and pouting._

_(Keith and Lance never become co-pilots at the Garrison. Keith is expelled in the beginning of sophomore year, after three full years as top pilot. The students of each class were separated into wings, with two fighter pilot positions available in each wing. With Keith gone, Lance is offered the new position. His co-pilot for junior year is James Harden. They don’t get along._

 

_Keith and Lance don’t become co-pilots until over a year after Keith’s expulsion, millions of lightyears from home.)_

“Hey, is it my turn yet?”

Lance whips his head around to see Keith coming out of the back of the lion, seemingly just woken up. Lance scrunches his face. Did he faze out for that long? The last thing he remembered Keith doing is sitting at his side. When did he go take a nap?

The brunet glances down at the time on the dashboard and realizes two and a half hours had passed already.  
“Oh,” he echoes. “Yeah.”

The two switch places easily, the strange maneuver becoming habit after so many shift changes. However, instead of going back to nap immediately, Lance leans against the pilot seat. Keith yawns, bleary eyes focused ahead.

“Hey, Keith?” he asks in a quiet tone. He receives a hum in reply. “Did you really not remember me at all at the Garrison?”

The half-Galran flinches, dark eyes darting towards Lance. “That was three years ago, Lance.”

“For you,” he whispers.

Keith seems to remember the Quantum Abyss predicament, and sighs. “Sort of,” he answers. Lance waits for him to elaborate, but the former paladin doesn’t add anything.

“Sort of?” he drawls.

The older squirms in the pilot’s seat. “I mean, I didn’t remember you at first. It took me a couple of minutes.”

“Why?” Lance prods. He knows he should be gentle, because his co-pilot is prone to shying away from confrontational topics, but he can’t help himself.

“Uh, there’s two reasons. Sort of.” This time, Lance doesn’t have to wait a full minute for elaboration. “First, you looked totally different.”

The paladin raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “What?”

“I mean!” Keith blurts, hands gripping the thrusters tightly. He glances back up at Lance. “The last time I saw you, you were like, 5’6”. You had this huge forehead and acne and your body was sort of—lanky. Like you didn’t fit into your personality. But then you find me in the Garrison hospital and you’re _really tall_ and fit and your face—”

The nineteen year-old cuts himself off. Lance suspects if his hair was shorter he would see the tips of his red ears. “My face?”

“It’s—” Keith stumbles over his words. “Nice. You have a nice face.”

Lance stares at the pilot in surprise. He feels the gears turning in his head as he replays the words. _You have a nice face_.

Keith jerks his head back between the dashboard and Lance. “Don’t look at me like that!” he huffs. “Nevermind, I just—”

“Keith.”

Lance clears his throat, interrupting him. “It’s fine,” a devilish smirk appears on his features. “You just think I’m hot. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

The following chaos in Keith’s emotions leaves Lance cackling. The boy seems like he’s trying to pinpoint _what_ he exactly wants to say, but instead just chokes out angry noises. His eyebrows scrunch over his dark eyelashes, squinting out at space before jerking his gaze back to Lance.

“I’m kidding!” Lance guffaws. His stomach begins to hurt from laughing so hard. Keith doesn’t seem to appreciate the paladin’s pleasure at his expense, and swats at Lance’s head. When he finally stops laughing, he smiles. “Okay, so you didn’t recognize me at first because I grew over half a foot in a year and became outrageously gorgeous. Check. What was the second reason?”

Keith scoffs with a light smile at the statement, but Lance notes with heated cheeks that he doesn’t correct him. “You’re not allowed to laugh at me for the next one,” he demands. Lance rolls his eyes playfully, and Keith continues. “No. I’m serious. I’ll pilot Red straight into an asteroid belt.”

Their lion gives an unamused grumble at the idea.

“Fine, I promise,” Lance grins and raises his pinky finger next to Keith’s. The rebel scoffs but locks their digits together.  
“I thought your name was Taylor since we were twelve.”

Lance trips over his words, sputtering into a loud laugh. Keith rips his fingers away, annoyed. “You said you wouldn’t laugh!” he protests as his co-pilot leans over the chair in giggles.

Somehow through his laughter Lance manages to ask _why_.

“People always called you _The Taylor_.”

“Oh my god, Keith—” the sharpshooter is still laughing, “they called me The _Tailor_. T-A-I-L-O-R. As in, the person who sews clothing. Because I was good at doing the needle maneuver.”  
Keith’s blank face sends Lance into another fit of laughter.

 

*

 

“Hey, did you really forget what happened after the fight with Sendak?”

“I remember pain. And the smell of apple shampoo when I was carried to the pods. I think that was Hunk.”

“That was me.”

“Oh,”

 

*

 

On the third day, both teens are tired. The whole Wake Up, Fly For Three Hours, Sleep for Three system was leaving them exhausted, but they were making excellent time. Keith suggests at this point they might make it to the planet two days ahead of Matt.

By midday, they pass by the Kuumbar system. Lance looks up information on it on Red’s database and discovers it’s highly unstable, with three suns so close. Most of the planets left in the solar system were too hot to have life on them or were evacuated years ago. Keith puts up a radiation guard around Red, but the heat still makes the cockpit sweltering. Lance reaches up from the pilots seat to flick on the AC to discover it’s already on. He groans, slumping in the seat.

“This sucks,” he grunts. Keith seems equally as miserable. He’s stripped off his armor in favor of the tight, black flight suit underneath. Lance has to focus to keep his eyes off him. He bites the inside of his cheek, close enough to draw blood.

Keith pushes off of the dashboard, walking out of the front. Lance only hears clanging from behind him as the other searches for something. After a few minutes, the half-Galran reemerges with a rubber band. He pulls his hair off his sweaty neck before tying it up. Lance gulps. This was the first time he’s taken notice to how _long_ Keith’s hair has gotten. It’s brushing his shoulders now and Lance has to take deep breaths before refocusing on the trajectory in front of him.

The Galran manages to find his way back into Lance’s vision. “Are you _sure_ we can’t just go around this system?”

Lance nods, happy to find something to distract him from the curls wisping off of Keith’s neck. “Yeah. I did the math while you’re sleeping. Going around would add three days onto the trip.”

His co-pilot scrunches his face. “How?”

“Well, you have to add in the distances we have to travel just to avoid entering gravitational orbitals of the twenty-four planets in this system as well as the three suns,” Lance explains, curving Red’s path slightly as they pass by an orange planet.

A moment of silence passes and Lance realizes Keith hasn’t replied. He glances over to see the Marmoran rebel staring at him like he’d grown a second head.

“What?” he chuckles nervously, darting his eyes between Keith’s and the dashboard.

“Have you been hanging around Pidge and Hunk a lot?”

“Are you calling me dumb?”

“...no.”  
“You hesitated,” Lance glares.  
“Did not!”  
“Did too!”

“Did no—” Keith is cut off as Lance loses focus, almost letting Red get pulled into the pull of a large gas planet. He quickly corrects it before side-eyeing the former paladin.

He only sighs, pushing his sweaty bangs from his forehead. Lance doesn’t stop him when he goes back into the cockpit.

 

*

 

When Keith asks Lance to find a gallon of the Altean version of mechanical oil, he didn’t expect to find a large storage box in the mechanical room. The paladin rarely ever goes in here; most of the repairs he does on Red happen under her dashboard. Sure, Lance has his stuff from the castle left in the cabin behind the cockpit, but he never thought Keith might’ve left his things behind from when he was the red paladin.

Lance can’t help but taking the lid off the storage box. He’s _nosey_ , okay? Maybe not as nosey as Hunk or Allura, who are both known for being the team’s gossips, but growing up with three older siblings made him like this.

When he lifts the lid Lance certainly didn’t expect to find souvenirs. The box is filled to the brim with them—some are just pictures printed off of their portable Altean phones, while others are gifts from saved civilians. The Cuban lifts off a parchment from the top. It’s left neatly in a protective sleeve, with no damage on the paper. A child’s drawing of Team Voltron adorns the paper, colored over lines but still obvious that the child put work into it. Coran, Allura, and Shiro stand in the middle, brandishing swords with big smiles. Hunk and Pidge are on their left, high-fiving each other. On the right, Lance and Keith stand arm-in-arm, but their faces are drawn so they look light they’re bickering.

Lance smiles. At the bottom of the picture, a child’s signature is written in an unfamiliar alphabet. If Lance had his helmet on, the translator would tell him what it means, but he left that back in the cockpit on the pile of armor.

Judging by the items in the bin, most of this stuff was from over half a year ago, before Shiro disappeared. After that, Keith had to fly the Black lion.

Lance quickly finds the oil before returning to the cockpit. Even though Red doesn’t need rest stops for flying, the machinery inside her will get worn out if they don’t lubricate it. Minding Keith’s legs, Lance slides under the dashboard, facing the gears above.

“I saw your souvenirs,” he starts taking off the panel to expose the machinery and wires. Keith’s foot twitches by his legs.

“I forgot I put those there,” is all Keith replies.

The paladin gets the panel off, but doesn’t let the conversation drop. “Hard to believe they’re from seven months ago. It feels like yesterday that Allura fell out of the cryopod onto me.”

“Yeah, we’ve come a long way,” the Galran hums. Lance can tell he’s being gentle with accelerating and changing trajectories for him. The thought brings the corners of his lips upwards into a smile. “I mean, your flirting still sucks as bad as it did on Arus, so maybe not so much.”

The teasing wipes the smirk off of Lance’s face. He rolls his eyes, pressing the lubricant canister onto a bolt to his left. “Oh, har har. That’s not even a thing anymore, with how Allura was basically swapping spit with Lotor.”

This is the first time anyone has mentioned Lotor since they left him in the quintessence field. Lance still feels guilty. If Keith does, he doesn’t show it. Instead, a chuckle comes out from above Lance.

“Wait, seriously? What have I been missing?”

“Those two were like, perfect for each other. At least until Lotor lost it. But before they were basically finishing each other’s sentences. I had the need to vomit at least twice daily because of them,” Lance grumbles. He finishes with the left side and leans over to his right. He’ll have to move these wires before reaching the machinery further in. “I mean, sure, I still thought Allura was gorgeous, but any possibility of _us_ being a thing was gone the second she laid eyes on the dude.”

Keith’s foot nudges Lance’s leg. “That’s rough, buddy.”

He shrugs, pulling the wires back. Lance reaches forward to spritz more oil onto the metal parts. “Whatever. I mean, I have bigger things to worry about than her. Besides, what you want isn’t always what you get. My abuelo always said that.”

His co-pilot hums. Lance is almost finished with all of the oiling under the dashboard. Hopefully he won’t have to do it again until they’re back with the team.

“I hated being in there,” Keith states lowly. Lance is about to ask him where he’s talking about but the nineteen year-old speaks before he can. “The quintessence field. It made me feel like it was either victory or death. I didn’t even realize how aggressive we were until Allura pointed it out and got us out of there. I felt like a slave to it.”

The Cuban puts the oil down in favor of staring at the wires and gears above him. He has little grasp on what exactly they do. “Me too,” he responds. “Do you—do you think that Haggar and Zarkon could’ve been changed back? To their normal selves? Or Lotor, if we hadn’t left him?”

He feels Keith’s foot press steadily against his leg. The consistent presence calms him.

“No,” Keith answers. His voice doesn’t waver. “They were too far gone, all of them.”

Lance chooses not to continue the conversation. Keith doesn’t object. It barely takes him a minute to finish the lubrication before he moves on to other maintenance.

 

*

 

“So, I forgot to ask this because of all the other crap going on, but where the hell did you get the dog?”

“We found him on the space whale. I saved him so he took a liking to me, I guess.”

“So… he’s a space dog?”

“Shut up.”

“What’s his name?”

“...Yorak.”

“What the fuck is a Yorak?”

 

*

 

It’s over twelve hours later that Lance can’t sleep anymore. He lies on the cot, staring at the ceiling. Someone had scratched tally marks into the metal. He’s unsure if it was Keith, the Galra, or King Alfor. The paladin huffs, sitting up. Time to annoy Keith.

Said teenager is found sitting in the pilot seat, looking bored out of his mind. His back faces Lance, but he doesn’t need to see his face to know the apathetic expression adorning it.

“Hey old man,” Lance greets, draping himself over the pilot’s chair. Keith’s face screws up in the dashboard reflection.

“Lance, you’re three months older than me.”

“Not anymore, Mr. Nineteen-Years-Old.”

Keith’s expression drops at the reminder. “Oh. I guess,” he mutters. Lance leans over, resting his chin on Keith’s head.

“How was it?” he questions. “In the quantum abyss?”

The Korean sighs. “It was… lonely.”

“But you had Krolia and your space puppy,” Lance points out. His teammate shifts under him.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “But I missed everyone. I didn’t know you guys weren’t aging at the pace I was. I mean, I knew the time was messed up in the abyss, but Krolia and I didn’t know how much.”

Lance straightens and walks around to sit on the floor next to Keith. For once, the older continues without being nudged.

“There was some scientific explanation that Krolia said, but every couple of days the abyss would flash, and I’d have a flashback to things I don’t even remember. Sometimes it came from Krolia’s memory, but there were some memories where I was a baby with just my dad,” Keith explains. He pauses and bites his lip, before releasing it. “I would get glimpses of the future, too.”

Lance perks up. Keith saw bits of the future? How did that even work? “Really?”

He nods. “It wasn’t detailed, and it really only happened once every two months, but I saw it. Most of the time I have no idea how old I am or where I am but they happened. It always happened at night, too,” Keith puffs out a quiet laugh. “Which was good, because Krolia was asleep so she didn’t see them.”

The Cuban grins, lips curling into a Cheshire Cat smile. “ _Oh_ , did our resident space ninja have some PG-13 visions?”

He watches as the tip of Keith’s ears turn red. The other avoids eye contact with Lance. His grin only grows. “Shut up,” Keith mumbles.

Smacking his hands on the chair’s armrest, Lance raises himself up to eye level. “You totally did! Who was it?” he teases.

“Who was what?” Keith asks dumbfoundedly.

“The person you were getting it on with. You know: sexy times, horizontal tango, being freaky in the sheets—” his list is interrupted by Keith smacking his hand over Lance’s mouth.

“Shut  _up_!”

Lance’s cackling echoes throughout the cockpit. His co-pilot grits his teeth in embarrassment. Red seems to enjoy Lance’s pleasure, and purrs along contentedly. Lance doesn’t miss the _traitor_ Keith mutters at her.

When he finally stops laughing, Lance cups his jaw in his hands, resting his arm on the seat. “You gonna tell me who it was? Or, will be?”

Keith glances at his teammate for only a moment before jerking back forwards. His face isn’t _red_ , but his entire jaw is clamped shut. Lance can see the veins popping from his neck as his eyes narrow ahead. Even when he tries to get in Keith’s line of vision, the Galran sees straight through him. Finally, after several minutes of poking and prodding, Keith opens his mouth.

“I don’t know,” he mutters. Lance rolls his eyes.  
“Uh, of course you do. Do you know them in the present already?”

Keith shoots a glare at him and turns back to the dashboard. Slowly, he nods his head. Lance’s heart twists, but he doesn’t know why. Why would he care if Keith will eventually have sex with someone? For a moment, he sits confused, before concluding it’s in his protective nature. He’d do it with all of his teammates, not just Keith. _Right_?

His friend clears his throat awkwardly. Lance realizes he’s waiting for a reaction.

Deciding he’d now rather not know who it’ll be, Lance unsubtly changes the subject. “Am I alive in your future? Can you tell me that?”

“We’re not immortal, Lance. We all die eventually.”

“No, I know that, idiot,” he scoffs. “I mean, am I alive much longer? Like, do you know if I’ll survive the war?”

Keith is quiet for a moment before a soft smile adorns his face. He stares ahead with a peaceful expression. “You do,” after a moment, Keith adds, “We do.”

Lance smiles and doesn’t question the additional statement.

 

*

 

If this intergalactic road trip was worth anything, Lance now knows that Keith is scarily good at categories. Especially countries, because Lance runs out of ideas around his twelfth but Keith keeps going. When asked for an explanation, he only shrugs.

“Geography was my favorite class,” he says.

Eventually, they get bored of that, too, so they move onto ‘I Spy,’ but the two realize that the only thing they see right now are distant stars and black space. Keith looks relaxed. He leans against the back of the pilot’s chair comfortably. Whenever he laughs, Lance can feel hot air press against his scalp. It would be annoying, if it were anyone else, but the brunet can’t find it within himself to complain about it.

Lance is about to tell him to fix his posture before he gets a hunchback, but a sudden beeping on the dashboard interrupts him. He leans forward, Keith following. A map of the current solar system they’re in pops up. To their right, a long asteroid belt stretches past the graph’s boundaries. However, the purple dots adorning the graph on the top left corner is concerning.

“Galra,” Keith seethes. Lance could’ve _sworn_ he just heard a growl in the back of the rebel’s throat. “What are they doing in this system?”

“Relax, they’re probably just an injured fleet from the rebels. We can just go around them,” Lance states. He glances down at the graph again to form a plan.

“The only way we can go is right,” Keith points out. “And to our right is an asteroid belt almost two kilometers long.”

Lance wants to respond with a snarky _thanks, Captain Obvious_ , but bites it back. Two kilometers doesn’t seem like a lot anywhere else, but the paladin sees _way_ too many objects throughout the field that could make it hard getting through.

“It looks like they were recently hit by something. Probably the Galra ships. It’s fine, asteroid belts are my specialty,” he tells himself more than Keith.

“Uh, I’m pretty sure they weren’t, Lance.”

“Shh, I’m concentrating. Put your helmet on, it’s going to get bumpy no matter how careful I am,” Lance states. He hears Keith move behind him, and a second later a helmet is shoved on his head. Blue eyes widen, and Lance looks up to see Keith avoiding eye contact. “I could have put that on myself,” he notes.

Keith huffs. “I’m not taking any chances of us crashing with your hands off the wheel.”

The other is about to snap that there isn’t even a wheel in the Red lion, but the dashboard beeps again in warning of the Galra fleet. They were getting too close. Any further, and they would probably be picked up on the Galra scanners. Lance grits his teeth and veers the lion towards the asteroid field on their right. The dashboard goes off again, this time warning him of the incoming field. Keith turns off the notifiers without being asked.

As the lion enters the field, Lance can already feel the change in gravity. Some of the asteroids are large enough to have their own, and the Red lion lurches whenever they get too close to one. Lance leaps across the smaller rocks, propelling him faster through the field. A year ago, the idea of flying in an asteroid field that wasn’t part of a simulator was jarring. Now, Lance doesn’t think twice before twisting the lion through a tight crevice between to masses.

Keith’s fingers grip the back of the chair tightly. There are three passenger seats in the back of the cabin that he could easily strap himself into, but he stays gripped to the pilot’s chair.

“Why does the annoying crap only happen when _I’m_ the one flying?” Lance grumbles. He’s not sure if he imagined the quiet chuckle from behind him.

The sudden jolting and turns to avoid rock masses makes Lance remember late nights at the Garrison, spent in the simulators.

 

*

 

 _The first day of being a fighter pilot did_ not _go well. Lance thought he’d be able to fly with Keith Kogane, just like Shiro had predicted. Instead, he came into class to find his co-pilot was James, and Keith had been expelled. When he asked why, the teacher scoffed._ _  
_ _“The cadet had disciplinary issues a mile long, everyone saw this coming. His talent could only take him so far,” is all she said._

_Instead, Lance comes back to his dorm, disappointed. Keith was gone, and he didn’t even know. According to his classmates, he had been gone for over a week now. Rumors spread like wildfire, and some of the ideas for the reason of his expulsion were hilarious. One of them included him punching Iverson in the face. Another was him breaking into an office to steal files about the Kerberos mission failure. Lance wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out to be both._

_“How were the simulators?” Hunk asks as their door slides open. He’s resting on his stomach, looking through three different textbooks on his bed._

_“Fine,” Lance mutters. He beat his personal record, but in comparison to the other fighter pilots of his year, that was nothing. They_ _beat theirs_ _everyday. Always improving._

_Always improving._

_The cadet climbs up to the top of his bunk, exhausted. Currently, he was waking up at 5AM to workout before classes. He knows an extra bit of fitness would go a long way during a space flight, so he started going to the Garrison gym more often in hopes his instructors would notice his efforts. They probably didn’t, but the female cadets did, along with a couple guys. Lance didn’t mind_ that _._

_“Did you eat dinner?” Hunk asks from below him. Lance shakes his head, but realizes his roommate can’t see his face._

_“No.” He didn’t have the time. He needed to catch up with the rest of the fighter pilots who had been in the program for years. Fortunately, his extra work was showing small results. Each week, when the fighter pilots had their official ranking simulators, Lance edged closer and closer to James’ scores. This made the boy scowl more each week._

_“Yeah, me neither. Keaton’s aerodynamics essay is kicking my ass. I have a couple packages of ramen, though. We could go to the common room to_ _heat it up_ _in the microwave?”_

 _Lance mumbles a_ sure _before hopping off the top bunk and landing with a thud on the floor. Once the two leave, they continue down the hallway for a while before Hunk realizes he forgot the ramen. They have to walk all the way back._

“— Lance!”

The paladin is rocked back into reality, noticing he maneuvered through the asteroid field already. The idea of it had become second nature in the Garrison simulators, so he wasn’t surprised he totally fazed out during it. Lance glances down at the digital clock Pidge installed to see it was time for the two to switch off. He’s about to get up from the seat when a small date stops him.

It took awhile, but Pidge had finally calibrated a way to put Earth time and date into Altean clocks. Afterwards, she ran screeching around the castle in victory. It was only later that she installed it everywhere: the lions, the bridge, the common room, random places in the Castle Ship hallway. Sometimes, the screens glitched and warped the pixels so the time and date were illegible. This time, Lance could read it clearly.

“Hey, it’s gonna be my birthday soon,” he states. _July 27th_ are clearly displayed on the clock. “Tomorrow.”

Keith perks up. He leans towards the counsel. “Should I get you anything?”

Lance thinks about it before shaking his head. “Nah, you coming back is enough of a present. Let’s switch,” keeping his hands on the thrusters, he stands and moves out of the way. Keith sits down, looking slightly more fidgety than he was before. He doesn’t meet Lance’s eyes, but a small smile sits on his face.

“Good night, Lance,” is the last thing he hears before walking into the cabin.

 

*

 

On the last day of flight, Lance’s birthday, both boys are exhausted. Keith had gotten a transmission from the team while Lance was asleep, so the first thing he does in the morning is translate morse code since Keith apparently isn’t good at multitasking.

After thirty minutes, Lance has the full transmission message written down on a scrap of paper. It’s just asking for updates. Lance responds and Keith asks him to inquire how Shiro’s health is.

“I just want to know how he is,” Keith explains after Lance finishes writing. “After the whole—the whole fight.”

Lance scrunches his face. “How are _you_ doing?”

His partner snorts. “Why do _I_ matter? I’m not the one who got my arm cut off.”

“You always matter,” the Cuban insists. Keith had told everyone bits and pieces of the battle once they had gotten back, so Lance only has a loose grasp of what happened. However, his new scar was left up to assumption. It wasn’t even scabbing over, instead leaving a clean burn across his cheek. “Why didn’t you clean the wound?” Before even finishing the question, he reaches for the first aid kit under the dashboard.

Keith shrugs. “It would’ve scarred anyway.”

“It could have at least faded it,” he refutes, popping open the kit. He searches around the supplies before finding the antiseptic and burn cream. “I have some scar cream in my stuff from the Castle in the back, if you want some of it.”

He stands to go get it, but a hand grips his arm. He looks down to see indigo eyes gazing into his. “I like it,” he whispers. Lance doesn’t have to ask what he’s referring to. He sits back down next to the first aid kit.  
“Didn’t take you for someone who yearns for the ‘scarred soldier’ look.”

“No—it just...it makes me look a little like my mom.”

The vulnerable expression on Keith’s face makes Lance’s heart break. The boy who grew up an orphan finally finds his missing mom, but barely looks like her. Now that the paladin thinks about it, the scar looks eerily like Krolia’s Galran marks.

“Do you miss her?” Lance smiles. Keith hesitantly nods, but keeps his eyes ahead as Lance uses the Altean version of an alcohol wipe on his cheek. He doesn’t bother taking out the bandages. The wound isn’t even open, cauterized the second it scorched into his face. However, he does begin to put a burn salve on the skin so it doesn’t get infected.

Keith flinches away. Lance reaches up to cup the back of the Galran’s neck to keep him still. “Don’t move,” he whispers. It’s in a quiet tone, afraid of being too loud and scaring Keith off like some wild animal. “It’s just for infection. It won’t fade anything.” The older keeps still this time for Lance to begin applying it.

A minute later, most of the salve has been absorbed into Keith’s skin. “Y’know,” Lance begins, still applying the ointment to the bottom of Keith’s jaw. “You may not have the whole purple-skin thing like Krolia, but I think you’re alike. You have the same nose and lips, and when you’re angry you both scrunch your face the same way. Your personalities are a lot alike, too. I can tell where you got the emo-slash-badass traits from.”

The other keeps his eyes forward, but for the past minute he’s been gently leaning against Lance’s hand still on his neck. “Thanks, Lance,” the smile on his face is soft. Lance has to mentally scold himself when he almost moves his fingers to brush against Keith’s upturned lips, creating small dimples in his cheeks. “Sorry if the emo-slash-badass traits are annoying. I know I have a lot to work on in the personality department.”

Lance smiles. “No,” he whispers. “I think you’re fine just the way you are.”

Keith takes his eyes off the dashboard and looks at Lance. The turn of his head draws a whine from the Cuban, who’s still not done applying the rest of the salve. Lance has every intention to tell the pilot to keep his eyes forward, but the idea burns out on his tongue when he sees the look on Keith’s face. It’s unfamiliar. His eyebrows are tensed, but his eyes are gentle, searching for something in Lance’s eyes. His lips are pursed. Lance swallows as Keith’s gaze lowers slightly.

“You mean that?” he asks lowly. Lance glances back at Keith’s lips while he speaks, then back to those dark eyes.

“Ye- _ah_ ,” he stutters and matches Keith’s volume. His hand still rests on the back of Keith’s neck. He can feel soft hair brushing against his fingertips when Keith breathes.

The nineteen year-old darts his eyes towards Lance’s lips and back again. He leans forward, just so there’s barely any space between their faces. Lance struggles to maintain eye contact when he feels hot air tickle his skin.

In all the time Lance has known Keith, he’s been impulsive. Maybe he was born like that, inherited from his mother, or maybe ingrained into his childhood after his father died. But, Lance realizes, this is the first time he’s ever seen the Korean hesitate. Keith was never halting for anything or anyone, but somehow, in this moment, he waits.

Lance squeezes his left hand on Keith’s neck. Fingertips slide across smooth, dark hair. It pulls Keith forward, just barely. Not enough to close the space between their lips, but enough of a sign for Keith to push ahead, eyes drifting closed.

Lance breathes in sharply when their lips press against each other as if he’d been holding it for years. The armrest of the pilot’s seat still lays between them, but Lance lifts his right arm to rest his elbow on it, tangling his fingers through Keith’s bangs and pushes them back. His lips are warm and chapped. Lance can’t find it in himself to complain. Keith can’t take more than one hand off the thrusters, but he gently grips his right into the thick, black fabric of Lance’s flight suit.

When the paladin presses into Keith more, he hums and tightens his grip. This feels _amazing_ , and Lance can’t remember why he hadn’t kissed Keith sooner. Any reasons fly out the cockpit hatch and into the deep void of space.

Keith smells like the Altean soap they brought with them, a tangy citrus invading Lance’s senses. It makes him dizzy. Keith tilts his head, sighing into his teammate’s mouth.

He’s busy swiping his tongue across Keith’s bottom lip when a low, disappointed grumble rings through his mind. Judging by the sudden halt in Keith’s movements, Red growled at him too. The message is easy to decipher: _no distracting the pilot_.

They wrench away from each other simultaneously with red faces. Keith looks like he wants to crawl under a rock and die. The hand on Keith’s neck falls back, supporting Lance from falling over. The sudden slap back to reality leaves him disoriented. He brings a finger to his still-buzzing lips. If he closes his eyes, he can still feel the pressure of Keith against his lips. He _really_ shouldn’t do that.

Said half-Galran’s eyes are wide, mouth clamped shut.

“I—you—” Lance feels as if his head is going to explode. “What—what was _that_?” he shrieks.

“I don’t know!” Keith pushes himself as far away as he can from Lance, which admittedly isn’t far because he’s still in the pilot’s chair.

“You _kissed_ me!”

“You kissed me _back_!”

“I—” Lance falters. Keith’s right, he realizes. He covers his face in his hands, tilting his head back with an embarrassed groan.

How did he get from wanting to beat Keith so bad to wanting to feel his lips press against Lance’s again in just a year?

When he peeks through his fingers, Keith side-eyes him from the pilot’s seat. His face is as red as his armor piled in the corner with Lance’s. The cockpit lighting doesn’t help hide his blush, either.

“I’m—” Lance is still struggling to get out words. It amazes him that all it takes is _Keith_ to make the normally charismatic sharpshooter turn into a stuttering, fumbling mess. “I’m gonna be in the back.”

“Yeah, okay,” the Marmoran rebel replies distractedly.

Lance exits the cockpit rapidly. When he lies down on the single cot built into the wall, he covers his face, chuckling warily. He just kissed _Keith_.

 

*

 

An hour later, he comes back out to switch places. The duo move without speaking, eyes averted. The thick, tense atmosphere stays even when Keith clears his throat, nods, and moves to leave.

“Keith, wait,” Lance sighs. He has one hand on the thrusters, but is turned around to face his co-pilot. He stops. Hesitantly, Keith walks back next to the seat.

“Yeah?” His voice is gravelly and rough. Lance shivers.

“We should...talk about what happened,” Lance suggests carefully.

Keith grimaces. “We really don’t have to. It’s fine.”

“No, if we don’t I’ll overthink myself into an early grave.” Lance may be dramatic, but it’s true. He didn’t even fall asleep in the cabin, instead overthinking while staring at the wall.

“Oh,” is all he gets in reply.

There’s a beat of silence. Lance glances back at the dashboard before turning his attention back to Keith. “How long have you…” he trails off. Keith crosses his arms.

“Been wanting to do that?” he finishes in a low tone. Lance nods, slowly. “I don’t know. I noticed after Shiro disappeared for the second time.”

The paladin chokes out an _oh_ from his throat. That was over six months ago, now.

“Um, do you…?” Keith fumbles over his words. “Since you kissed me back…” His voice catches on the _kissed_.

“Yes,” Lance affirms.

Keith looks uncomfortable. “How—how long, too?”

Blue eyes avert their gaze back to the dashboard. “Since our freshman year, I think.” He wants to add _maybe earlier_ , but is afraid of scaring Keith off.

“Oh,” he whispers.

Keith looks even more uncomfortable. Lance panics. Is this too much? Should they just have left the kiss as that? Never speak of it again? The Cuban’s stomach squirms at the thought of ignoring it. “That’s all I wanted to ask, I guess,” he mutters. “You must be tired. You should sleep.”

He acts as if he didn’t see the half-Galran reach for him. Keith halts mid-air, hesitating. The hand drops.

“Yeah, okay.”

Keith leaves. The automatic door slides shut behind him with a soft hiss.

 

*

 

That night, Lance awakes to Keith’s voice over the comms.

“Lance, we’re entering the atmosphere. Buckle up.”

Their sense of time is skewed, now. The constant three hours flying, three hours sleep has messed up his circadian rhythm. On both Earth and the Castle Ship, if it still existed, it was nighttime. But Lance felt awake and ready to move. He shuffles over to the passenger seats bolted against the wall. Lance buckles himself into the seat just as he feels the turbulence kick in. It shakes the lion violently to the point Lance has to grip the armrests so he doesn’t fall over. When it finally stops, he unbuckles his seat as Keith exits from the cockpit.

“Nice to see you conscious,” he greets. He’s already wearing the familiar red armor. He has Lance’s armor hauled over his shoulder, with both of their helmets in his hands.

“That was the worst landing I’ve ever felt,” Lance teases in response. For a moment, he lets himself believe that things are normal. They never kissed, they aren’t into each other, they’re just teammates.

It lasts for approximately three seconds before Lance notices Keith’s hair is pulled into another ponytail and his heart lurches. Keith rolls his eyes in reply to the exaggeration. He mumbles a _shut up_ before handing Lance his armor.

The past few hours had been mostly silent between the two teenagers, neither bringing up the kiss or the confessions afterward. The only time they spoke was if it had to do with the mission.

“C’mon,” Keith beckons once Lance has his armor on. “I just checked the database and the atmosphere and water sources are suitable for us. We don’t even need our helmets.”

Lance grins and follows him eagerly out the hatch. Once they’re outside, still technically in the boundaries of the force field Red automatically put up, Lance takes huge gulps of air. He revels in the non-recycled oxygen, unlike the stuff they breathed in Red for almost a week. He voices this aloud, and Keith laughs.

The planet Pidge and Matt chose for the rendezvous was a lush, green forest. It looked like the closest thing space could have to resemble the Amazon back on Earth. Although the plants looked a little larger and felt a lot rougher than the foliage back home, the climate was still humid and wet. Insect-like creatures buzzed around their ears. The sounds of animals shouting mating calls (Keith tells Lance they’re harmless, it said so on the database) fills the air.

“It almost feels like Earth,” Keith states, voicing Lance’s inner thoughts. He almost didn’t want to say it, afraid he’d find something that was totally different from Earth, breaking the illusion.

There’s a distant splashing of water, and it only takes a moment before Keith grins. “Waterfall,” he mumbles, before sprinting off into the forest, bayard in hand. Red lets him go through the force field easily, before putting it back up.

“Wait—Keith!”

No sign of the former paladin occurs, so Lance groans and follows after him, grumbling about unsafe mission partners. He follows Keith’s footprints in the moist soil, compressing under the weight of their feet easily. Lance makes sure to evade as much foliage as he can. At one point, he comes across a thick hanging of vines, all slashed apart. The sound of water is closer, now.  
When he comes around the corner of a large, deep red tree, Lance is met with a sight he surely didn’t expect.

It was, in fact, a waterfall. It’s small, no larger than six feet, but it pools into a wide basin before spreading off into different deltas. The forest surrounds the entirety of the area, but Lance can still see the yellow-tinted sky above him.

In the middle of the pool floats Keith, clad in black boxers and nothing else. His armor and flight suit lay at the edge of the lake. Lance walks forward without thinking, catching the attention of his friend.

“Lance!” he calls, looking way too happy to be normal. Lance wonders for a moment if a bug bit and drugged him with some venom. “We can actually bathe! Without using wipes!”

“You didn’t plan this very well,” he answers. “We left the soap back in Red.”

“Check the pocket of my flight suit,” Keith commands before dipping his head under the water. He comes back up with soaked, straight hair. Lance flushes when he realizes it’s skimming his shoulders. Keith’s forehead is on display, and he wants to tease him for it being so pale but stops himself. Instead, Lance obeys. He crouches down to find the pocket in the pile of armor and clothing. When he finds it, there’s an Altean bar of soap in soft silicone packaging.

“Get in!” he calls. Lance doesn’t need any more direction. He drops the soap package to the ground and starts tugging off his plated armor. Within a minute it’s off and he’s left in his flight suit.

Lance reaches around his back, tugging the zipper down his spine. He quickly pulls his sleeves off, letting the rest hang off his torso. It takes another thirty seconds for him to shimmy his long legs out of the clingy fabric. When he’s done, he’s in light blue boxers, courtesy of Coran duplicating the little clothes they left Earth with.

The water is almost warm, once he gets in. It reminds him of Varadero, but without the saltiness and clear water. The lake is a deep blue, but still shallow enough for Lance to stand up to his neck. He swims over to Keith, soap in hand. Said person floats on their back, looking at peace.

“My ass is flat from sitting in that pilot’s chair for so long,” he states. Lance snorts, handing him the soap. He turns to Lance. “Do you want to use it first?”

“I don’t care.” He really doesn’t. Maybe, six months ago, before he and Lance formed an indescribable bond as leader and right-hand man, he would’ve. But now he couldn’t care less.  
Keith lathers the soap up in one hand, rubbing it across his chest and neck. Lance’s eyes follow his fingers, down his pale neck and onto a broad chest, littered with small scars from training and battles—

“Hold this,” he instructs, unnoticing of Lance’s staring. He takes the soap and watches as Keith runs the suds through his hair in an attempt to clean it.

“That’s really not good for your follicles,” he blurts. Keith looks at him in puzzlement. After a moment, a snort erupts from his chest, turning into full-on laughing. Lance knows that he’s not laughing at him, so he starts chuckling too.

Keith’s eyes scrunch up when he laughs really hard. So does his nose, creating tiny wrinkles along the bridge. His dark eyebrows push together and his lips lift to the point you can see some of his gums. He tilts his head towards the sky slightly, and only one word comes to Lance’s mind whenever he sees it.

“Cute,” he mumbles.

Keith hears this, and halts in his laughing to look at Lance.

“I mean!” the brunet panics. “I just—”

He smiles. “It’s fine,” his eyes are still scrunched, but this time it’s from his cheeks lifting up. “Let’s go check out the waterfall.”

 

*

 

The waterfall, it turns out, hurts. Lance always daydreamed of taking a special someone on a hiking trip to a waterfall, to kiss under it as the water splashed against their shoulders—

Instead, it feels like they’re assaulted by the force of it. Lance isn’t sure why it is, the drop is no more than two meters. It isn’t until Keith points out it could’ve been caused by the magnetic poles that he accepts the elimination of his waterfall date dream and heads back to shore.

When they come back to the Red lion, it’s late afternoon on the planet. Apparently, there are no intelligent inhabitants, mostly filled with insects and quasi-avian creatures. None that can hurt them, Keith informs Lance later. Matt will supposedly arrive tomorrow around noon. The two decide to sit outside for dinner, sick of being cramped up inside the Red lion for so long.

They are seated on her paws, eating food goo from dehydrated packets when the first falling star is spotted. Night falls quickly on this planet, due to the rotation being faster. Keith is the first one to see it.

“Hey, look up,” he probes. Lance turns his gaze up towards the stars to see one, two, three more stars fall across the sky. He knows they’re not _really_ stars, but the popular name for them always stuck. Keith takes out his database device that Pidge made for each of them a long time ago. When he types in the planet’s name—a bunch of numbers and letters due to no inhabitants with the awareness to name the hunk of rock they’re living on—long articles come up. A moment later, he hums. “This planet seems to be a hotspot for incoming meteorites in the solar system. Because of its oxygenated atmosphere, they always burn up in several pieces upon entrance. These happen almost every night.”

“That’s awesome,” Lance mumbles. His food goo lays next to his legs, forgotten. He notices Keith stops eating as well in favor of looking at the meteorite shower. The two lay their arms behind them to rest on. Lance feels his arm brush against Keith’s shoulder. If he notices, he doesn’t voice it.

More and more specks of light fall across the night sky. It’s not uncommon for the team to be on a planet where Lance doesn’t recognize any stars in the sky at all. Most of the time, even if they’re anywhere close to the stars they see on Earth, they’re from totally different positions than what Lance’s used to. Their surroundings are almost pitch black, now. The planet’s three moons shine from behind them, offering little light on the forest in front of them. What little they can see of the foliage is covered in a red hue from Red’s force field.

They sit there in silence until the last fragments of the meteorites burn up in the atmosphere. It’s crazy to think that two months ago, they were fighting at Naxzela. Now he’s sitting with Keith, six light years away from the team, watching stars fall on a foreign jungle planet. He didn’t even think he’d _survive_ past Naxzela, but now—

A sudden thought pangs through Lance. Something happened to Keith at Naxzela. He didn’t say anything about it, but apparently it was life-altering enough that he decided to let down his walls and embrace honesty and emotions. The Cuban looks over at him. _It’s not important_ , Keith said when he brushed Lance off. If it wasn’t important, why change so much?”

“Keith?”

“Hm?” he turns to Lance, open expression adorning his face. Lance can barely see him in this light, only sharp outlines of his face in the moonlight.

“What happened at Naxzela?”

He flinches back. Lance almost wants to say _no, never mind, we don’t have to talk about it as long as you stay_ , but Keith opens his mouth before he can.

“I—uh, I was on Matt’s team, right? We were trying to penetrate the shields on the Galra battleship. They had the ion cannon ready, they only need a few more seconds, but none of our lasers were gettings us anywhere,” he thinks he sees Keith run a hand through his hair, but Lance isn’t sure. “I knew that if we didn’t get through those shields, we’d lose. Voltron would be destroyed, the entire sector we worked so hard to free would be lost, and most of us would be killed.”

Lance frowns, remembering the tense moments before Lotor came in to change sides. At that moment, he had started praying. It was something he hadn’t done in a long, long time, even back on Earth, but those few seconds felt like his last.

“Matt said there was nothing we could do over the comms, and I just—” Keith hesitates. “I thought, _there is one thing that could make it through_. Me.”

Lance’s breath is caught in his throat. He reaches forward to grip Keith’s sleeve.

“I was gonna do it, Lance. All I could think of was what it would feel like, if it’d hurt or I’d just be gone immediately. But then suddenly it exploded in front of me, and I pulled up and away from the shield.”

The two are silent after that. Lance knows that Keith wouldn’t want him to feel sorry or upset for him. His near-death wasn’t even much of a surprise, now. It seemed like once a month one of the paladins would have an injury be _just_ a bit too intense or a stray Galran shot _just_ a little too close for comfort. However, the fact that Keith _knew_ he would die and embraced it with open arms made Lance shudder.

After a few minutes, he speaks.

“You don’t feel anything, after you die,” he mutters. Keith looks up to him. “I was raised thinking we’d go towards a light or something and enter heaven, but…there’s nothing.”

Keith twists his hand out from under Lance’s to grip his wrist. “Lance, what—”

“It was about a month ago. While you were on a mission with the Blade. We were helping a Galra base who admitted loyalty to Lotor fix their shields before they hit a radiation wave. We were all split up with different jobs. I was with Allura. We had to get these shattered pieces of the shield to fuse together. Everything was going fine, but then the plates started cracking apart. All of this radiation suddenly shot out through a stressed fissure, right under Allura. I knew the team couldn’t go on without her, that Voltron would totally fall apart so—” he breaks off in a sharp exhale. “I pushed her out of the way. All I felt was pain, and—and then nothing. I had no thoughts, no consciousness. I was just empty.”

The grip on his wrist tightens, but Lance notices Keith is shaking a little. “How—” he tries to speak, but his voice cracks.

“Allura came. She used some alchemy stuff she learned while with Lotor. I don’t know the specifics, but I woke up a couple minutes later.”

“The others didn’t tell me.”

“They still don’t know about it. Allura and I decided that we’d wait until all of this is done. And it’s not, not by a longshot, but…” he falters. “I trust you.”

Keith doesn’t reply. Instead, he hears sniffling, and the grip on his head lets go. In the faint light he can see Keith scrubbing at his eyes.

“Keith?” Lance raises a hand to put on his shoulder, but the Marmoran rebel swats it away. Lance lurches back.

“Everyone—” oh god, Keith is crying, his voice is choked and Lance caused this. “Everyone important to me has died, Lance, and I should’ve been there for them. My dad—a _fucking burning building_ collapsed on him while he was trying to save someone. It was supposed to be his day off, but I was entering middle school soon and he wanted to get enough money to buy me a new backpack.

“And Shiro, I thought my brother was dead _twice_ . First with Kerberos, then when he disappeared. But the second time he _did_ die. On the fucking astral plane. His physical body disintegrated. And—and now _you_ —” Lance moves back, but Keith lurches forward and grips his shirt in his fists. Bitter resentment rests on his tongue, something Lance hadn’t been the aim of in a long time. “You fucking died! You died, while saving someone, just like _him_! And I should’ve been there, but I joined the fucking Blade of Marmora because I didn’t want you to leave the team and you _died, Lance._ ” His voice cracks off on the final words, no longer angry. A sob pushes over anything else he wanted to say.

Lance instinctively reaches forward, pulling Keith into his arms. The older sniffles into his flight suit. Toned arms wind their way around Lance’s waist hesitantly. He rests his chin on Keith’s head, leaning against the cool metal of Red’s paw.

“Keith,” he whispers. The hands at the back of his shirt tighten, but the other elicits no verbal response. “I’m sorry. I’m not like your dad, though. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. None of that was your fault.”

Keith, unsurprisingly, is not a loud crier. Even when the sobs wreck his body, the only sounds that come out are quiet whimpers and sniffles. Once he fully goes silent, Lance cups his jaw and pulls him up to his face. Moonlight hits Keith’s cheekbones, fluttering across long eyelashes and ending against the ridges of his nose and lips.

“I’m here,” Lance repeats, wiping off Keith’s cheeks. He pushes his bangs back and presses a kiss to the smooth skin underneath. He trails his lips along pale skin. On his forehead, on his temples, across his cheeks. Finally, he stops just above Keith’s lips. “I’m here.”

Those words seem to be all the affirmation Keith needs, because he surges forward. Their teeth slightly click, but Lance repositions them so their lips press against each other more evenly. Keith is still crying, Lance knows, because the wetness is still damp against his skin. Keith swings his leg over to straddle the Cuban’s thighs, hands snaking up to his neck. After a moment, Keith pulls away.

“I like you a lot, so don’t die on me, okay?” he whispers against Lance’s lips. The paladin laughs and nods, murmuring _I like you a lot, too_ , before pressing chaste kisses onto Keith’s lips over and over.

Eventually, the temperature starts to drop outside. The boys trail into the Red lion, fingers intertwined and hearts beating. They drop onto the cot together, repositioning themselves three times before they finally find a way to fit both of their lanky bodies onto the bed. Lance is on his back, one arm cushioned underneath his head. Keith is curled into his side, one leg and one arm slung over his torso. His face is pressed into the crook of Lance’s neck and shoulder, hot breath spanning over his chest.

For a while, the two just lie there without speaking. Every now and then, Lance will turn his head to press a long, lingering kiss against Keith’s hair.

“You and me, yeah?” he asks.

Keith smiles against Lance’s skin. “You and me, Lance. Go to sleep, we have to deal with Matt’s jokes for the next week and a half.”

The brunet chuckles, kissing the other once more before resting his head on the pillow, eyes drifting closed.

The last thing he hears is the whisper of _happy birthday, Lance_ , before falling asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! Please leave a comment telling me what you liked (and disliked! I am not against constructive criticism even though I'm still a baby about it). Comments are really the only feedback or rewards authors get because we do this for free and in our own time!  
> Again, if you'd be interested in being my beta, please message me on tumblr @rasp-b3rries !
> 
> NOTICE:  
> I have two Klance drafts and I'm unsure of which one I want to finish next. One is an Avatar!AU and another is an Illegal Street Racing AU. The Avatar one will take much longer to come out, but will also BE longer. Please let me know in the comments which one you'd like to see sooner!


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